Dr. V.K.Maheshwari, M.A. (Socio, Phil) B.Sc. M. Ed, Ph.D.
Former Principal, K.L.D.A.V.(P.G) College, Roorkee, India
-laureate of the emperor:
Seated on the throne, a god amongst men,
Thou, the Emperor of Delhi.
Blessed was the hour, the minute, the second,
When thou ascendest the throne,
O God amongst men,
Thou, the Lord of Delhi.
Long live thy crown, thy sceptre, thy throne,
O God amongst men,
Thou, Emperor of Delhi.
Live long, and remain awakened always,
O son of Humayoon,
Joy of the sun, God amongst men,
Thou, the Emperor of Delhi!
Tânsen, the poet-laureate of the emperor:
It is in the nature of governments to degenerate; for power, as Shelley said, poisons every hand that touches it.(1) The excesses of the Delhi Sultans lost them the support not only of the Hindu population, but of their Moslem followers. When fresh invasions came from the north these Sultans were defeated with the same ease with which they them-selves had won India.
Their first conqueror was Tamerlane himself more properly Timur-i- lang a Turk who had had given himself a pedigree going back to Genghis Khan, in order to win the support of his Mongol horde.
Timur crossed the Indus (1398), massacred or enslaved such of the inhabitants as could not flee from him, defeated the forces of Sultan Mahmud Tughlak, occupied Delhi, slew a hundred thousand prisoners in cold blood, plundered the city of all the wealth that the Afghan dynasty had gathered there, and carried it off to Samarkand with a multitude of women and slaves, leaving anarchy, famine and pestilence in his wake.”
The Delhi Sultans remounted their throne, and taxed India for another century before the real conqueror came. Babur, founder of the great Mogul Dynasty, ( Mogul is another form of Mongol. The Moguls were really Turks; but the Hindus called and still call all northern Moslems (except the Afghans) Moguls.( 2) “Babur” was a Mongol nickname, meaning lion; the real name of the first Mogul Emperor of India was Zahiru-d din Muhammad ”( 3), was a man every whit as Drave and fascinating as Alexander. Descended from both Timur and Genghis Khan, he inherited all the ability of these scourges of Asia without their brutality. He suffered from a surplus of energy in body and mind; he fought, hunted and traveled insatiably; it was nothing for him, single-handed, to kill five enemies in five minutes. (4) In two days he rode one hundred and sixty miles on horse- back, and swam the Ganges twice in the bargain; and in his last years he remarked that not since the age of eleven had he kept the fast of Ramadan twice in the same place. (5)
He took Kabul in his twenty-second year; overwhelmed the one hundred thousand soldiers of Sultan Ibrahim at Panipat with twelve thousand men and some fine horses, killed prisoners by the thousands, captured Delhi, established there the greatest and most beneficent of the foreign dynasties that have ruled India, enjoyed four years of peace, composed excellent poems and memoirs, and died at the age of forty- seven after living, in action and experience, a century.
His son, Humayun, was too weak and vacillating, and too addicted to opium, to carry on Babur’s work. Sher Shah, an Afghan chief, defeated him in two bloody battles, and restored for a time the Afghan power in India. Two minor Shahs held the power for a decade; then Humayun, after twelve years of hardship and wandering, organized a force in Persia, re-entered India, and recaptured the throne. Eight months later Humayun fell from the terrace of his library, and died.
During his exile and poverty Humayun’s wife Hamida Banu had borne him a son on October 15, 1542 in Umarkot, whom he had piously called Muhammad, but whom India was to call Akbar that is, “Very Great.
The kingdom Akbar inherited was little more than a collection of frail fiefs. Under the regency of Bairam Khan, however, Akbar achieved relative stability in the region. Most notably, Khan won control of northern India from the Afghans and successfully led the army against the Hindu king Hemu at the Second Battle of Panipat. In spite of this loyal service, when Akbar came of age in March of 1560, he dismissed Bairam Khan and took full control of the government.At the age of eighteen he took over from the Regent the full direction of affairs.
His Administration
Akbar was a cunning general, and he continued his military expansion throughout his reign. The army was supplied with the best ordnance yet seen in India, but inferior to that then in use in Europe. Akbar’s efforts to secure better guns failed; and this inferiority in the instruments of slaughter cooperated with the degeneration of his descendants in determining the European conquest of India.
By the time he died, his empire extended to Afghanistan in the north, Sindh in the west, Bengal in the east, and the Godavari River in the south. His dominion then extended over an eighth of India a belt of territory some three hundred miles broad, running from the north- west frontier at Multan to Benares in the East. He set out with the zeal and voracity of his grandfather to extend these borders; and by a series of ruthless wars he made himself ruler of all Hindustan except for the little Rajput kingdom of Mewar.
Akbar’s success in creating his empire was as much a result of his ability to earn the loyalty of his conquered people as it was of his ability to conquer them. He allied himself with the defeated Rajput rulers, and rather than demanding a high “tribute tax” and leaving them to rule their territories unsupervised, he created a system of central government, integrating them into his administration. Akbar was known for rewarding talent, loyalty, and intellect, regardless of ethnic background or religious practice. In addition to compiling an able administration, this practice brought stability to his dynasty by establishing a base of loyalty to Akbar that was greater than that of any one religion.
Beyond military conciliation, he appealed to the Rajput people by ruling in a spirit of cooperation and tolerance. He did not force India’s majority Hindu population to convert to Islam; he accommodated them instead, abolishing the poll tax on non-Muslims, translating Hindu literature and participating in Hindu festivals.
Akbar also formed powerful matrimonial alliances. When he married Hindu princesses—including Jodha Bai, the eldest daughter of the house of Jaipur, as well princesses of Bikaner and Jaisalmer—their fathers and brothers became members of his court and were elevated to the same status as his Muslim fathers- and brothers-in-law. While marrying off the daughters of conquered Hindu leaders to Muslim royalty was not a new practice, it had always been viewed as a humiliation. By elevating the status of the princesses’ families, Akbar removed this stigma among all but the most orthodox Hindu sects.
Returning to Delhi he put aside his armor, and devoted himself to re-organizing the administration of his realm. The Mansabdari system in particular has been acclaimed for its role in upholding Mughal power in the time of Akbar. The system persisted with few changes down to the end of the Mughal Empire, but was progressively weakened under his successors. In 1574 Akbar revised his tax system, separating revenue collection from military administration. Each subah, or governor, was responsible for maintaining order in his region, while a separate tax collector collected property taxes and sent them to the capital. This created checks and balances in each region, since the individuals with the money had no troops, and the troops had no money, and all were dependent on the central government. The central government then doled out fixed salaries to both military and civilian personnel according to rank.
His power was absolute, and all important offices, even in distant provinces, were filled by his appointment. His principal aides were four: a Prime Minister or Vakir; a Finance Minister, called sometimes Vazir (Vizier), sometimes Divan; a Master of the Court, or Bakhshi; and a Primate or Sadr, who was head of the Mohammedan religion in India. Some of Akbar’s more well-known courtiers are his navaratna, or “nine gems.” They served to both advise and entertain Akbar, and included Abul Fazl, Akbar’s biographer, who chronicled his reign in the three-volume book “Akbarnama”; Abul Faizi, a poet and scholar as well as Abul Fazl’s brother; Miyan Tansen, a singer and musician; Raja Birbal, the court jester; Raja Todar Mal, Akbar’s minister of finance; Raja Man Singh, a celebrated lieutenant; Abdul Rahim Khan-I-Khana, a poet; and Fagir Aziao-Din and Mullah Do Piaza, who were both advisors As his rule acquired tradition and prestige he depended less and less upon military power, and contented himself with a standing army of some twenty-five thousand men. In time of war this modest force was augmented with troops recruited by the provincial military governors a precarious arrangement which had something to do with the fall of the Mogul Empire under Aurangzeb. Bribery and embezzlement throve among these governors and their subordinates, so that much of Akbar’s time was spent in checking corruption. He regulated with strict economy the expenses of his court and household, fixing the prices of food and materials bought for them, and the wages of labor engaged by the state. When he died he left the equivalent of a billion dollars in the treasury, and his empire was the most powerful on earth.
Both law and taxation were severe, but far less than before. From one-sixth to one-third of the gross produce of the soil was taken from the peasants, amounting to some $100,000,000 a year in land tax. The Emperor was legislator, executive and judge; as supreme court he spent many hours in giving audience to important litigants. His law forbade child marriage and compulsory suttee, sanctioned the remarriage of widows, abolished the slavery of captives and the slaughter of animals for sacrifice, gave freedom to all religions, opened career to every talent of whatever creed or race, and removed the head-tax that the Afghan rulers had placed upon all Hindus unconverted to Islam. (6) At the beginning of his reign the law included such punishments as mutilation; at the end it was probably the most enlightened code of any sixteenth-century government. Every state begins with violence, and (if it becomes secure) mellows into liberty.
But the strength of a ruler is often the weakness of his government. The system depended so much upon Akbar’s superior qualities of mind and character that obviously it would threaten to disintegrate at his death.
His Personality
.” No effort was spared to make him great; even his ancestry had taken every precaution, for in his veins ran the blood of Babur, Timur and Genghis Khan. Tutors were supplied him in abundance, but he rejected them, and refused to learn how to read. Later he came to recognize the value of books, and being still unable to read listened for hours while others read to him, often from abstruse and difficult volumes. In the end he became an illiterate scholar, loving letters and art, and supporting them with royal largesse.
He educated himself for kingship by incessant and dangerous sport; he became a perfect horseman, played polo royally, he liked polo so much that he invented a luminous ball in order that the game might be played at night. He knew the art of controlling the most ferocious elephants; he was always ready to set out on a lion or tiger hunt, to undergo any fatigue, and to face all dangers in the first person. He had, of course, most of the virtues, since he engaged most of the historians: he was the best athlete, the best horseman, the best swords- man, one of the greatest architects, and by all odds the handsomest man in the kingdom. Actually he had long arms, bow legs, narrow Mongoloid eyes, a head drooping leftward, and a wart on his nose. (7) He made him- self presentable by neatness, dignity, serenity, and brilliant eyes that could sparkle (says a contemporary) “like the sea in sunshine,” or flare up in a way to make the offender tremble with terror, like Vandamme before Napoleon. He dressed simply, in brocaded cap, blouse and trousers, jewels and bare feet. He cared little for meat, and gave it up almost entirely in his later years, saying that “it is not right that a man should make his stomach the grave of animals.” Nevertheless he was strong in body and will, excelled in many active sports, and thought nothing of walking thirty-six miles in a day.
He inherited the violent impulses of his family, and in his youth (like his Christian contemporaries) he was capable of solving problems by assassination. Like a good Turk he had no effeminate distaste for human blood; when, at the age of fourteen, he was invited to win the title of Ghazi Slayer of the Infidel by killing a Hindu prisoner, he cut off the man’s head at once with one stroke of his scimitar. These were the barbarous beginnings of a man destined to become one of the wisest, most humane and most cultured of all the kings known to history.
His Character
Gradually he learned, in Woodrow Wilson’s phrase, to sit upon his own volcano; and he rose far above his time in that spirit of fair play which does not always distinguish Oriental rulers. “His clemency,” says Firishta, “was without bounds; this virtue he often carried beyond the line of prudence.” He was generous, expending vast sums in alms; he was affable to all, but especially to the lowly; “their little offerings,” says a Jesuit missionary, “he used to accept with such a pleased look, handling them and putting them in his bosom, as he did not do with the most lavish gifts of the nobles.” One of his contemporaries described him as an epileptic; many said that melancholy possessed him to a morbid degree. Perhaps to put a brighter color on reality, he drank liquor and took opium, in moderation; his father and his children had similar habits, with- out similar self-control. (Two of his children died in youth of chronic alcoholism.) (8) He had a harem suitable to the size of his empire; one gossip tells us that “the King hath in Agra and Fathpur-Sikri, as they do credibly report, one thousand elephants, thirty horses, fourteen hundred tame deer, eight hundred concubines.” But he does not seem to have had sensual ambitions or tastes. He married widely, but politically; he pleased the Rajput princes by espousing their daughters, and thereby bound them to the support of his throne; and from that time the Mogul Dynasty was half native in blood. A Rajput became his leading general, and a raja rose to be his greatest minister. His dream was a
united India.(9)
His mind was not quite as realistic and coldly accurate as Caesar’s or Napoleon’s; he had a passion for metaphysics, and might, if deposed, have become a mystic recluse. He thought constantly, and was forever making inventions and suggesting improvements. (10) Like Haroun-al-Rashid he took nocturnal rambles in disguise, and came back bursting with reforms. In the midst of his complex activity he made time to collect a great library, composed entirely of manuscripts beautifully written and engraved by those skilful penmen whom he esteemed as artists fully equal to the painters and architects that adorned his reign. He despised print as a mechanical and impersonal thing, and soon disposed of the choice specimens of European typography presented to him by his Jesuit friends. The volumes in his library numbered only twenty-four thousand, but they were valued at $3,500,000″ by those who thought that such hoards of the spirit could be estimated in material terms. He patronized poets without stint, and loved one of them the Hindu Birbal so much that he made him a court favourite, and finally a general (11)
Akbar had his literary aides render into Persian which was the language of his court the masterpieces of Hindu literature, history and science, and himself supervised the translation of the interminable Mahabharata. Every art flourished under his patronage and stimulation. Hindu music and poetry had now one of their greatest periods; and painting, both Persian and Hindu, reached its second zenith through his encouragement. (12) ‘ At Agra he directed the building of the famous Fort, and within its walls erected (by proxy) five hundred buildings that his contemporaries considered to be among the most beautiful in the world. They were torn down by the impetuous Shah Jehan, and can be judged only by such remnants of Akbar’s architecture as the tomb of Humayun at Delhi, and the remains at Fathpur-Sikri, where the mausoleum of Akbar’s beloved friend, the ascetic Shaik Salim Chisti, is among the fairest structures in India.
His passion for philosophy
Deeper than these interests was his penchant for speculation. This well-nigh omnipotent emperor secretly yearned to be a philosopher- much as philosophers long to be emperors, and cannot comprehend the stupidity of Providence in withholding from them their rightful thrones. After conquering the world, Akbar was unhappy because he could not understand it. “Although,” he said, “I am the master of so vast a kingdom, and all the appliances of government are at my hand, yet since true greatness consists in doing the will of God, my mind is not at ease in this diversity of sects and creeds; and apart from this outward pomp of circumstance, with what satisfaction, in this despondency, can I undertake the sway of empire? I await the coming of some discreet man of principle who will resolve the difficulties of my conscience. . . . Discourses in philosophy have such a charm for me that they distract me from all else, and I forcibly restrain myself from listening to them lest the necessary duties of the hour should be neglected.”(13) “Crowds of learned men from all nations,” says Badaoni, “and sages of various religions and sects, came to the court and were honoured with private conversations. After inquiries and investigations, which were their only business and occupation day and night, they would talk about profound points of science, the subtleties of revelation, the curiosities of history, and the wonders of nature.” ”The superiority of man,” said Akbar, “rests on the jewel of reason.” (14)
As became a philosopher, he was profoundly interested in religion. His careful reading of the Mahabharatta, and his intimacy with Hindu poets and sages, lured him into the study of Indian faiths. For a time, at least, he accepted the theory of transmigration, and scandalized his Moslem followers by appearing in public with Hindu religious marks on his forehead. He had a flair for humouring all the creeds: he pleased the Zoroastrians by wearing their sacred shirt and girdle under his clothes, and allowed the Jains to persuade him to abandon hunting, and to prohibit, on certain days, the killing of animals. When he learned of the new religion called Christianity, which had come into India with the Portuguese occupation of Goa, he despatched a message to the Paulist missionaries there, inviting them to send two of their learned men to him. Later some Jesuits came to Delhi and so interested him in Christ that he ordered his scribes to translate the New Testament. 100(15) He gave the Jesuits full freedom to make converts, and allowed them to bring up one of his sons. While Catholics were murdering Protestants in France, and Protestants, under Elizabeth, were murdering Catholics in England, and the Inquisition was killing and robbing Jews in Spain, and Bruno was being burned at the stake in Italy, Akbar invited the representatives of all the religions in his empire to a conference, pledged them to peace, issued edicts of toleration for every cult and creed, and, as evidence of his own neutrality, married wives from the Brahman, Buddhist, and Mohammedan faiths.
His greatest pleasure, after the fires of youth had cooled, was in the free discussion of religious beliefs. He had quite discarded the dogmas of Islam, and to such an extent that his Moslem subjects fretted under his impartial rule. “This king,” St. Francis Xavicr reported with some exaggeration, “has destroyed the false sect of Mohammed, and wholly discredited it. In this city there is neither a mosque nor a Koran the book of their law; and the mosques that were there have been made stables for horses, and storehouses.” The King took no stock in revelations, and would accept nothing that could not justify itself with science and philosophy. It was not unusual for him to gather friends and prelates of various sects together, and discuss religion with them from Thursday evening to Friday noon. When the Moslem mullahs and the Christian priests quarrelled he reproved them both, saying that God should be worshiped through the intellect, and not by a blind adherence to supposed revelations. “Each person,” he said, in the spirit and perhaps through the influence of the Upanishads and Kabir, “according to his condition gives the Supreme Being a name; but in reality to name the Unknowable is vain.” Certain Moslems suggested an ordeal by fire as a test of Christianity vs. Islam: a mullah holding the Koran and a priest holding one of the Gospels were to enter a fire, and he who should come out unhurt would be adjudged the teacher of truth. Akbar, who did not like the mullah who was proposed for this experiment, warmly seconded the suggestion, but the Jesuit rejected it as blasphemous and impious, not to say dangerous. Gradually the rival groups of theologians shunned these conferences, and left them to Akbar and his rationalist intimates.( 16)
His new religion
Akbar decreed that Hindus who had been forced to convert to Islam could reconvert to Hinduism without facing the death penalty. Akbar practiced several Hindu customs. He celebrated Diwali. He allowed Brahman priests to tie jewelled strings round his wrists by way of blessing and, following his lead, many of the nobles took to wearing rakhi (protection charms).(17) He had renounced beef, and forbade the sale of all meats on certain days .He ban cow slaughter, having only vegetarian dishes on certain days of the week, and drink only Ganges water. Even as he was in the Punjab, 200 miles away from the Ganges, the water was sealed in large jars and transported to him. He referred to the Ganges water as the “water of immortality.”
Akbar regularly held discussions with Jain scholars and was also greatly impacted by some of their teachings. He invited spiritual teacher Acharya Hiravijaya Suri to Fatehpur Sikri.Akbar was impressed by the scholastic qualities and character of the Acharya. He held several debates and discussions on religion and philosophy in his courts. Arguing with Jains, Akbar remained sceptical of their atheistic views on God and creation, and yet became convinced by their philosophy of non-violence and vegetarianism and ended up deploring the eating of all flesh.Akbar also issued many imperial orders that were favorable for Jain interests, such as banning animal slaughter.(18) Jain authors also wrote about their experience at the Mughal court in Sanskrit texts that are still largely unknown to Mughal historians.(19)
During the early part of his reign, Akbar adopted an attitude of suppression towards Muslim sects that were condemned by the orthodoxy as heretical. He suppressed Mahdavism in 1573 during his campaign in Gujarat, in the course of which the Mahdavi leader Bandagi Miyan Sheik Mustafa was arrested and brought in chains to the court for debate and released after eighteen months. However, as Akbar increasingly came under the influence of pantheistic Sufi mysticism from the early 1570s, it caused a great shift in his outlook and culminated in his shift from orthodox Islam as traditionally professed, in favour of a new concept of Islam transcending the limits of religion.
Harassed by the religious divisions in his kingdom, and disturbed by the thought that they might disrupt it after his death, Akbar finally decided to promulgate a new religion, containing in simple form the essentials of the warring faiths. In 1579, a mazhar, or declaration, was issued that granted Akbar the authority to interpret religious law, superseding the authority of the mullahs. This became known as the “Infallibility Decree,” and it furthered Akbar’s ability to create an interreligious and multicultural state. In 1580, a rebellion broke out in the eastern part of Akbar’s empire, and a number of fatwas, declaring Akbar to be a heretic, were issued by Qazis. Akbar suppressed the rebellion and handed out severe punishments to the Qazis. In order to further strengthen his position in dealing with the Qazis, Akbar issued a mazhar or declaration that was signed by all major ulemas in 1579.(20) The mahzar asserted that Akbar was the Khalifa of the age, the rank of the Khalifa was higher than that of a Mujtahid, in case of a difference of opinion among the Mujtahids, Akbar could select any one opinion and could also issue decrees which did not go against the nass. (21)
In 1582 he established a new cult, the Din-i-Ilahi (“divine faith”), which combined elements of many religions, including Islam, Hinduism and Zoroastrianism. The purported Din-i-Ilahi was more of an ethical system and is said to have prohibited lust, sensuality, slander and pride, considering them sins. Piety, prudence, abstinence and kindness are the core virtues. The soul is encouraged to purify itself through yearning of God. Celibacy was respected, chastity enforced, the slaughter of animals was forbidden and there were no sacred scriptures or a priestly hierarchy. The faith centred around Akbar as a prophet or spiritual leader, but it did not procure many converts and died with Akbar.
The Jesuit missionary Bartoli records the matter thus:
He summoned a General Council, and invited to it all the masters of learning and the military commandants of the cities round about, excluding only Father Ridolfo, whom it was vain to expect to be other than hostile to his sacrilegious purpose. When he had them all assembled in front of him, he spoke in a spirit of astute and knavish policy, saying: “For an empire ruled by one head it was a bad thing to have the members divided among themselves and at variance one with the other; . . . whence it came about that there are as many factions as religions. We ought, therefore, to bring them all into one, but in such fashion that they should be both ‘one’ and ‘all’; with the great advantage of not losing what is good in any one religion, while gaining whatever is better in another. In that way honour would be rendered to God, peace would be given to the people, and security to the empire.” (22)
The Council perforce consenting, he issued a decree proclaiming him the infallible head of the church; this was the chief contribution of Christianity to the new religion. The creed was a pantheistic monotheism in the best Hindu tradition, with a spark of sun and fire worship from the Zoroastrians, and a semi-Jain recommendation to abstain from meat. The slaughter of cows was made a capital offense: nothing could have pleased the Hindus more, or the Moslems less. A later edict made vegetarianism compulsory on the entire population for at least a hundred days in the year; and in further consideration of native ideas, garlic and onions were prohibited. The building of mosques, the fast of Ramadan, the pilgrimage to Mecca, and other Mohammedan customs were banned. Many Moslems who resisted the edicts were exiled. (23) In the centre of the Peace Court at Fathpur-Sikri a Temple of United Religion was built (and still stands there) as a symbol of the Emperor’s fond hope that now all the inhabitants of India might be brothers, worshiping the same God.
As a religion the Din Ilahi never succeeded; Akbar found tradition too strong for his infallibility. A few thousand rallied to the new cult, largely as a means of securing official favour; the vast majority adhered to their inherited gods. Politically the stroke had some beneficent results. The abolition of the head-tax and the pilgrim-tax on the Hindus, the freedom granted to all religions,( With the exception of the transient persecution of Islam (1582-5 ) the weakening of racial and religious fanaticism, dogmatism and division, far outweighed the egotism and excesses of Akbar’s novel revelation. And it won him such loyalty from even the Hindus who did not accept his creed that his prime purpose political unity was largely achieved.
The last days of Akbar
With his own fellow Moslems, however, the Din llahi was a source of bitter resentment, leading at one time to open revolt, and stirring Prince Jehangir into treacherous machinations against his father. The Prince complained that Akbar had reigned forty years, and had so strong a constitution that there was no prospect of his early death. Jehangir organized an army of thirty thousand horsemen, killed Abu-l Fazl, the King’s court historian and dearest friend, and proclaimed himself emperor. Akbar persuaded the youth to submit, and forgave him after a day; but the disloyalty of his son, added to the death of his mother and his friend, broke his spirit, and left him an easy prey for the Great Enemy. In his last days his children ignored him, and gave their energies to quarrelling for his throne. Only a few intimates were with him when he died presumably of dysentery, perhaps of poisoning by Jehangir, on October 27, 1605, Fatehpur Sikri, India Mullahs came to his deathbed to reconvert him to Islam, but they failed; the King “passed away without the benefit of the prayers of any church or sect.” (24) No crowd followed his simple funeral; and the sons and courtiers who had worn mourning for the event discarded it the same evening, and rejoiced that they had inherited his kingdom. It was a bitter death for the justest and wisest ruler that Asia has ever known.
The great Akbar, the Mogul Emperor,
was practically a Hindu.
—Swami Vivekananda( 16 August 1898, Place: Srinagar, Kashmir )
Referances
1- Havell, History, 368
2- Smith,Ox,H.,321
3- Enc. Brit xii 212
4- Firishtah, Muhammad Qasim, History of Hindustan, ii, 188.
5- Elphinstone, 430.
6- Smith, Akbar, 226, 379, 383; Bcsant, 23.
7- Smith, Akbar, 333
8- Ibid, 235-7
9- Arrian, Indica,x
10- Ibid
11- Smith, Akbar 235-7
12- Arrian, Indica,x
13- Smith, Akbar 494
14- Ibid 493
15- Havell, History, 499
16- Smith, Akbar, 133, 176, 181, 257, 350; Havell, History, 493, 510.
17- Curry: A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors By Lizzie Collingham P. 30
18- Truschke, Audrey. “Jains and the Mughals”. JAINpedia.
19- Truschke, Audrey. “Setting the Record Wrong: A Sanskrit Vision of Mughal Conquests
20- Chandra 2007, p. 254,
21- Ali 2006,p 159
22- Smith, Akbar 212
23- Ibid, 216-21
24- Ibid, 301, 323, 325.